Looking Back: January 4, 2012

1912 After hearing screams coming from a hut on the lake in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a boy ran to a nearby police officer and told him something was wrong. The officer ran to the hut, where he found a young woman who had been shot three times in the back and once in the face. The officer called for an ambulance and tried to prepare the woman for transport. At some point, she became conscious and told the officer that her name is Annie Shulman, that she is 21 years old and that she lives on Schenck Avenue. The cop asked who had shot her, but she passed out. At the hospital, the doctors said Shulman probably wouldn’t live. Shortly afterward, a young man appeared at the Bergen Street police station, asking to be arrested. “I shot a girl in the park. Arrest me,” he said. The young man, one David Monash, said he shot Shulman because she refused to marry him..

75 Years Ago

1937 According to the British Zionist Federation, the leadership for the Jews of Palestine would like for their polity to be subsumed under the British Empire. As part of the same resolution, any attempt to restrict the Jews to minority status in Palestine was considered worthy of condemnation. “The Jews of the world are shocked and very concerned regarding the most recent attempts to have the Jews remain a minority in the Land of Israel. I cannot believe that England, who promised the Jews shelter in the Land of Israel, would abandon a beleaguered minority surrounded by enemies,” Lady Reading said. “England’s ideals and those of the Jews were founded on the same tradition, based on peace for all mankind,” she continued. “Why should we not hope for a day when a Jewish government will come to the British Empire and say, ‘We want to belong to you’?”

50 Years Ago

1962 The last day of the year brought us sad news from the USSR, where Soviet authorities shut down the last synagogue in Lvov. According to the Soviet government, the last surviving synagogue in a city where there were once 200,000 Jews was a nest of “economic criminals.” Authorities also arrested the synagogue employees on charges of “hooliganism” and “profiteering.” The synagogue was the last little corner of Jewish life left in Lvov, and now it is gone. Once a major city in Galicia, and home to one of the region’s largest Jewish communities, settlements of Jews have existed in Lvov since the 13th century. But now, the anti-Semitic Soviet rulers have extinguished the last flicker of Jewish life there.

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